nation, gradually coming round to that which seemed to me, when I first
conceived of it, a dream too chimerical to be cherished save in
secret--the restoring woman to her natural share in that sacred office of
healer, which she held in the Middle Ages, and from which she was thrust
out during the sixteenth century.

I am most happy to see, for instance, that the National Health Society,
{15} which I earnestly recommend to the attention of my readers,
announces a "Course of Lectures for Ladies on Elementary Physiology and
Hygiene, by Miss Chessar," to which I am also most happy to see,
governesses are admitted at half-fees. Alas! how much misery, disease,
and even death, might have been prevented, had governesses been taught
such matters thirty years ago, I, for one, know too well. May the day
soon come when there will be educated women enough to give such lectures
throughout these realms, to rich as well as poor,--for the rich, strange
to say, need them often as much as the poor do,--and that we may live to
see, in every great town, health classes for women as well as for men,
sending forth year by year more young women and young men taught, not
only to take care of themselves and of their families, but to exercise
moral influence over their fellow-citizens, as champions in the battle
against dirt and drunkenness, disease and death.

There may be those who would answer--or rather, there would certainly
have been those who would have so answered thirty years ago, before the
so-called materialism of advanced science had taught us some practical
wisdom about education, and reminded people that they have bodies as well
as minds and souls--"You say, we are likely to grow weaklier,
unhealthier. And if it were so, what matter? Mind makes the man, not
body. We do not want our children to be stupid giants and bravos; but
clever, able, highly educated, however weakly Providence or the laws of